Blackbox
by Cael Fenton
Summary: Standalone companion to Coke. Unlikely theatre as history repeats itself: a post RotS AU.
1. Repeat Performance

**Author's note**:

**Blackbox** — A simple theatre performance space consisting of a square room with the interior painted black. Used extensively in modern experimental drama for its versatility and spartan bareness, requiring a performance with minimal set and lighting.

This is a companion piece of sorts to my earlier piece **Coke**—a rather less abstract one, and quite a bit more out- and up-ward looking, ie less gloomy. I began and ended writing **Coke** at two very low points in my life—the deaths of two people very close to me, but **Blackbox** was written around late December to mid January, when things were beginning to look up.

This two-part vignette is lovingly dedicated to the continuing memory of my dear Ping.

**Disclaimer**: All recognisable characters are property of LucasFilm. For further **acknowledgements**, see below.

**BLACKBOX**

**Chapter I: Repeat Performance**

'Obi-Wan!'

'Senator?'

She did not, as she usually did, protest his use of her title of address. Indeed, she barely seemed to register it. She caught only the sound of his voice, and missed the word it carried. Of course, this time, she would be right, thought Obi-Wan grimly, and the reason why she was right and he wrong was his own fault…

Dry cool hands found his arm and held his elbow in a light, tremulous grasp. With Jedi senses—how accursed it was to bear that name was these days—he heard Padme's breath gasping in the dark, in and out of the soft, pretty mouth Anakin had so loved. Only the taste of sorrow now lingered on those lips.

Obi-Wan remembered dozens of missions on which his life had been preserved by the blonde youth by his side, recalled the hundred muddy bunkers he had crouched in beside his Padawan, and last sprang to mind how he had been carried to safety on Anakin's back after the young man had freed Chancellor Palpatine, soon to be declared Galactic Emperor, from the Seperatists. And it flashed through his thought that Anakin had, in a different way, and to a lesser extent, perhaps loved him too.

'I—I had a bad dream…Obi-Wan…'

This scene was familiar to him, though the character opposite his own was different, and the stage they trod, the setting their gestures were bound by, was alien. He angled his head toward where her voice had come from.

'Padme…'

He searched his memory of the previous performance for the lines that came next. During the Clone Wars, he had learned the importance of playing the part of Jedi Master General Obi-Wan Kenobi to the end. And yet—in the end—he had had to question what end he was seeking. He had long known that to be a Jedi was to be essentially sheltered, but killing and killing and killing, and the awful futility of war, and the unshakeable, implacable horror of human blood refusing to mar the pristine surface of the white, plastoid, clone-trooper body armour of his nameless, faceless, utterly-obedient-to-the-death soldiers, who had ultimately betrayed him, had driven that into him relentlessly harshly, cutting him to the bone, cutting away Jedi-ness and purpose and mission, until, other than Anakin, he had had only the mask of routine to protect and prompt him. Now in the darkness they sat in, in the seeming void Palpatine had set them down in, masks and the theatrics of leading the Republic's armies in a galactic war were invisible, and Obi-Wan had the feeling that the trembling, sweating, exhausted actor with badly smudged makeup beneath was very much more visible away from the glaring stagelights, in this cell where fatigue in the unceasing dark brought with frequent sleep vicious nightmares of massacre and fire and betrayal instead of dreams of light and hope. He paused.

'Dreams pass in time.'

'That's what you said to Ani once, isn't it?' There was neither resentment nor accusation in her voice.

'More than once. He told you?'

'He wasn't very happy about it, Obi-Wan.'

'Ah. He wasn't? Now you're telling me!' They both laughed laughs of muddied joy. Obi-Wan was glad she was awake. They crouched like naked animals in a long starless night, and yet the darkness that surrounded them, in which not so much as a photon of light was allowed, was not so dark as the threat that bared its teeth inside the nightmare of dreaming. Waking, he felt as though sleep was a yellow-eyed abomination trying to shove him facedown into the cracked and blasted and riven and rent and tormented plutonic rock of Mustafar that was black, black.

The hours passed him like fantastic, shallow dreams. To be so detained in this lightless place devoid of brave night and unknown to fearless day was the worst kind of torture, it depriving him of the only selfhood he had known since before he became aware of himself, and after the other selfhoods that came later were torn from him. He had first been a Jedi, and then Qui-Gon Jinn's Padawan, a role which had superceded all else. And then in a single cruel stab of a lightsaber, the second role had been rescinded and the third thrust upon him, all at once, and he was suddenly both teacher and guardian to the Chosen One. Yet while he was no longer Qui-Gon's Padawan, Obi-Wan had felt the dead man would always be his Master. He would not sully the memory of Qui-Gon Jinn in this prison where there was barely room for both Padme and himself to lie on the floor with their legs tucked up under them—despite the overwhelming depth of darkness around them, fathomless as deep space, it was no place for him, in this of all places surely having not room enough for his former Master—no, not in this airless, sunless, hopeless end to which his blindness had brought not only himself but also Padme, nor with the vision of Darth Vader, in whom his absolute failure had been utterly consummated. Obi-Wan had been left nakeder than the day he was born. All he had left was to be a Jedi. The greatest grief of his imprisonment was that the walls confining him trammelled also his Jedi nature. Away from the Order and the Council and the demands of the Senate, he watched in astonishment as a wild desire to be the Jedi who had been stifled throughout the Clone Wars rose in him, beaten and defeated though he thought himself—not the young, stern, inwardly uncertain master nor the lightsaber-swinging war hero of the Republic, but the boy who had defied Master and Council to help the children caught in war with their own parents in their desire for peace, the boy who had tried to understand Qui-Gon's love for Tahl. In short, to be once again Qui-Gon's Padawan, a desire that did not let him forget his former Master. He wanted to go forth into the universe, careless of convention and tradition and _rules_, with no allegiance save to the Force and to those who needed him—fixing things, fixing people.

And he was sitting here! He put out his hand and felt Padme's neck, and remembered the first time he had seen her. He had thought of her then as not so much an actress on the stage, but as a defenseless gamepiece in the grasp of the Trade Federation. Slowly he had come to see the versatile thespian within the elaborate costumes and under the thick layers of makeup—the Queen who had entered politics when still a child, the girl who ruled a world. And then Qui-Gon was dead, and, caught in the stagelights, everything became for him a matter of living from moment to moment—not in each moment but straining constantly for the next, holding out for hope.

Here he was at last, in this dark end, and she was beside him, indomitable, firmer than the foundations of a planet. He prayed she would remain this way. She was the constant in the erratically seesawing equation of his life, which he often felt didn't quite add up, the staple feature in the scenery setpiece when he so often felt as though he had wandered onto the stage of the wrong matinee, with no idea of the plot, blockings, or characters. One never knew, reflected Obi-Wan with more than a touch of black irony, when the hard dry rock beneath the feet could disintegrate into a nacarat geyser of liquid fire that spat pain and loss onto the skin and ate away youth and hope.

There she sat before him, invisible in the dark, petite, her smooth curved cheeks surrounded by soft brown curls, irrevocably marked by grief, there she sat before him, Padme Naberrie, the only pillar of strength the Force had deigned to leave him clinging to. His touch on her neck intensified momentarily, then quickly stopped.

Padme had been a friend since Qui-Gon's death. She had shared with him willingly her female insight into his Master during the short days she had known him. And he had, in reciprocation, bit by bit, reluctantly, slowly, painfully, shared a little—very little—of the years he had had with Qui-Gon Jinn. And yet, here, even here, even in hopeless darkness and even here where pain bit in his sleep, even here where masks were torn away and the whole dramatis personae of this galactic drama were exposed and reduced to a faceless, characterless mass of shame, even here, he could not, must not, get confused. She was her own person. He was his. He hoped so. He could not get them confused, because…

'Senator?'

'_Padme_, Obi-Wan. What is it?'

'Please—stay the same. For your children. For the Alliance. For—Anakin.'

'Obi-Wan.' Her clothes rustled restlessly. 'Do you really think Anakin's—_there_?'

'I—' Words stuck in his throat. He reverted to 'For—Anakin.'

'Obi-Wan, you're—' She grabbed his left wrist with both hands. 'You're burning up!'

His only response was to lose consciousness, his head lolling, not heavily or jerkily or abruptly, but gently, into the hollow between her neck and shoulder, his coppery hair, which she couldn't see, tickling her cheek. She pressed her right hand against his back. It was damp with sweat, and yet cold. And she didn't know which was the real ailment: was the cold, the shaking, shivering chill that threatened to rob her of the only dear one left to her in all the galaxy, playacting the role of his feverish sweat? Or was the sickly, clammy skin disguising the raging fire Mustafar's volcanoes had stoked in him, a fire that would burn him to ashes between her fingers?

She didn't know. She remembered the fleeting moment of horrible uncertainty long ago in a green meadow of Naboo's Lake Country, when Anakin had fallen, fallen and not gotten up immediately. She had felt the same uncertainty, albeit multiplied ten thousand times, more recently, when Obi-Wan had come to her penthouse one evening asking after Anakin's whereabouts, the day after she had watched the Temple burn from her window. But on Naboo, Anakin had gotten up, when she ran to him. This time, she had run to him again, but he had fallen further. And he had yet to get up.

She wanted Obi-Wan to repeat what his Padawan had done on a Nubian field so long ago. She wanted him to lift his head and laugh, and she would laugh with him, in this dark dry place. But he didn't. He was sick, and she could do nothing for him, except keep watch for hope.

'Don't do this, Obi-Wan,' she pleaded softly. 'Don't…' Her voice broke on a dry little sob, like a wave's foamy crest on a sea-girt rock at night.

**Acknowledgements**: Precise definition of **blackbox theatre** as written above adapted from Wikipedia's excellent article.


	2. Intermission

**Disclaimer**: All recognisable characters are property of LucasFilm.

**Chapter II: Intermission**

She had not come in here with Obi-Wan.

While she laboured to deliver her children into the world, she had wanted death, believing Anakin to be dead. Dead by his former Master's lightsaber. But after she had named the twins, and they had been carried away to be cared for by the medic droids, Obi-Wan had knelt by her side to whisper into her ear the same words he had spoken just before he lost consciousness, 'For your children, Padme. For the Alliance. For Anakin.'

She did not respond to him then, at least not verbally—she couldn't. But she regained hope, and that had been enough for Obi-Wan. When she was almost recovered, it had been reluctantly agreed that there were five persons—herself, her children Luke and Leia, Obi-Wan, and Master Yoda—who must be split up for their own safety, and the safety of the other four. Later, Obi-Wan had appealed to Bail and Yoda to let him stay with Luke on Tatooine. 'Look at the child, Master—his eyes are the image of his father's!—and he will be stronger than even Anakin. He needs someone to make sure he doesn't unwittingly betray himself to the Sith.'

Padme had been grateful. 'I could not have asked for a better guardian to watch over my son,' she had told him quietly. She had gone to Alderaan with her baby daughter, and the girl's new guardian Bail, after Obi-Wan had left for Tatooine with Luke in his arms. A month, she had pleaded, a month with each of her children, foolish as her maternal desire was, self-destructive as it was to love, love, love, she wanted exactly that—to love them as she departed for Serenno where she would stay until the Alliance was strong enough to overthrow the Empire. And bare weeks after Leia had settled into her new home, Padme was escorted to Tatooine with the best men Bail could provide. Her guards were all young, barely older than herself, barely older than Obi-Wan had been when Anakin was apprenticed to him. They had all been murdered. She had been afraid then, afraid of torture, afraid of what she would tell about her children when pressed. But no hurt had touched her, save to lie in the darkness with no inkling of the passage of time. After she arrived—she didn't know how long after, it could have been minutes, it could have been weeks—she had had the most fleeting glimpse of the faintest glimm from the far end of the corridor that led to her cell, and in crawled Obi-Wan Kenobi, literally dragging himself along the floor. He was bloodied, exhausted, shattered. The Emperor had not given the Jedi Master the same tenderness he had shown her, it had seemed. Even hearing Obi-Wan gasp painfully for breath, she had had to know: 'How—how are they? Safe?'

Obi-Wan had been unable to answer, but she fancied she had _felt_ a reproachful gaze on her. Guilty, she had tried to make amends—brushing away the blood on him as best she could, feeding him when struggled to do it himself. Now she laid a hand on his hair. 'Is this your sentence, Palpatine?' she whispered to the night. 'To witness him die, unable to even see his last breaths? Is this my punishment for being Anakin Skywalker's wife?'

She would stay awake, as she knew he had done very often. She would keep watch. She would hold out for hope.

Of course, having resolved that, she soon fell asleep. When she awoke, discomfited, Obi-Wan's damp chilly body still against hers, she became aware of something else in the cell. Food. As carefully as she could, she lowered Obi-Wan onto the floor and felt her way to inspecting it.

It seemed the normal fare. Nutrition capsules and water. She slowly put her hands and fingers through the familiar motions of picking up a food capsule and placing it in her mouth and swallowing it. She was doing this when a horrid sensation of nausea swooped in her stomach, possessing her. Padme stared about herself in the blackness around them, blind, unseeing. She closed her eyes, ignoring the non-existent degree of difference it made to visibility within and without her, knowing, knowing deep inside that when she opened them, there would be…

…light…

Her actions abruptly transformed from those of a weary actress well-rehearsed with the stage, lines, characters and plot, who knew her environment and whose environment knew her, into those of a wild bird uprooted from its native habitat, displaced, dislocated. It flapped its wings and beat them against the columns of freedom around the vastness encaging it. Where was the star, the actress that soared across the stage? No more.

'He's not well!' she cried out.

'Obi-Wan's sick!'

Her fingers flew to his forehead, and flicked over his tousled hair in quick, worried movements. Words from long ago floated to the surface of her mind.

_Do you think…Obi-Wan might be able to help us?_

And then the theatrical silence, followed by Anakin's _We don't need his help_, which she had already expected, as though they had been reading from a script—which, of course, they had all been doing for at least the past three years.

'O-Obi-Wan? Get better soon…'

oooooooOooooooo

He did get better, though 'soon', of course, was questionable, as the only means of measuring time they had was the irregular interval between meals—she thought of them as feeding times, like at a zoological exhibit on Coruscant.

But before that, before, when he wasn't himself, when he had been so sick, he had slept, and he had dreamed. _Anakin Anakin Anakin_ he had cried in the dark _Padawan, come back_ and she could only hold him. She had not recognised this man, this hot trembling body that was so wet with tears and sweat, so fraught with nightmare; this voice—why, she had never heard this voice before!—that was raw and rough with pain. She had held his hand, pressed her fingers into his palm, had willed him life. She had felt it as the Force or luck or fate returned warmth to the cold fingers; she had held his arm against her chest and laughed even more when he opened his eyes than when he first spoke again, in his normal calm voice, the one that was not hoarse with grief. Childlike, childish, they each knew the other was thinking. As though any of that mattered! But it did. That was their private little rebellion, within the serenity of their endless night.

And Obi-Wan kept watch.

'Why don't you sleep?' she asked, once.

He had replied simply, 'I'd rather not have the dreams.'

So he stayed awake, and Padme knew not to ask after the dreams. She need not, indeed, ask. They were the same, always, like repeated performances of a well-known play. Visions, visions of the past; visions of what might have been. They spoke not of hope, though.

Time was measureless, but not yet meaningless. Not yet. They had begun to feel, in this near-timeless darkness, in their weary mortal bodies, that anything was possible, or rather, that nothing was impossible. They would swim the deepest ocean, climb the highest mountain, fly the winds between the stars' cold light. They would live ten thousand eternities. Nothing was impossible!—nothing save escape.

Was life hopeless, was hope lifeless?

They stayed awake, waiting. Into darkness had fallen the Son of the Suns. And so they waited in the darkness of the wings, waiting, waiting for a cue, waiting in darkness for their curtain call. So it was that once, his Jedi hearing sharpened by blindness, Obi-Wan heard a scratching, like that of a small rodent, furtive, small, mean, self-conscious, self-aware, shameful. A humanly ashamed sound, a doggedly animal sound, that little noise of the scratching.

Obi-Wan stirred. He had been still for the passing of a timeless age. Light, endless power and glory, immortality unceasing, everlasting love, boundless flight, all vanished from his mind, minor characters exiting the stage, coldness, blindness, terror, hopelessness taking their place. He paused, moved—he moved then, feeling fleeting crushed by the heavy pregnancy bearing a long-expected horror in its womb in the moment before that in which he clenched his fist around a slender wrist damp with warm blood, as a beaten slave boy who had been shown cruelty and who had shown cruelty would grasp a feeble, captive nestling, fallen from its perch, that he had stalked.

'Padme, Padme,…'

'…why?…'

From his Master he had learned pity. Would he betray that, now? In swift pity, he stated, not asked—'Don't'. A tired, a weary 'Don't.'

In wavering strength she answered with a question, Senator Amidala, torn from her home, family, love, light, hope, life. 'Why not?'

Why not? Why not? _Wasn't it all his fault?_ Everything?

Clumsily, he held her wrist against his ribs with his elbow as he found the grain of his tunic and tore a strip off the rough softness between his fingers. In the dark, he searched for the fingernail gouges on her wrist, and bound them firmly with the improvised dressing.

'You realise I can't let you do this,' he said, softly, dully.

_Breathe in hope. Breathe out despair._

Dressing the self-inflicted wounds had helped somewhat. Something had whispered to him that it was what he must do. Perhaps…

_You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!_

He would not think of that.

_The boy is dangerous. They all can sense it_…

He had gone over that memory before; many, many times before, and each time, Qui-Gon hadn't been there to answer.

…_why can't you?_

He wasn't there.

'Listen to me,' he said. 'When I was brought here, I told them nothing useful about your children. Palpatine would have pressed for more, but Darth persuaded him to have me put to death—and I was brought here instead. As far as I know, I am dead to Darth Vader. That is why—you understand, Padme?—that is why I—I hope.'

She gave a tiny, choked cry. 'You hope? When he wanted to kill you, Obi-Wan?'

There was a silence. 'You didn't see it,' he finally said, very quietly. 'If Anakin had been there, he would have done the same, at the last. Asked them—begged—to kill me. For his sake, as much as for mine.'

The enormity of horror in his words impacted her as a tidal wave of agony.

'Oh, Obi-Wan…'

'…it's all my fault.'

More from habit than anything else, he shook his head. 'Don't start on that. He might have done it all for you, and he would not have left you here in darkness with only prideful, arrogant, treacherous old Obi-Wan for company. Bitterness in his voice was swallowed by urgency, and an unexpectedly re-ignited strength, kindled by the flaming hope he had tried to light in Padme, a sudden tropical dawn on the backdrop of a dark empty stage.

A warm realisation leapt up in the coldness inside him like a child's first laughter. 'I was wrong,' he murmured, and then, louder, clearer, 'I was wrong. I thought neither I nor this place was fit to contain the memory of Qui-Gon. But he always said—he always said—' and here his voice jerked like curtains being drawn back to reveal the marvellous, magical theatre, 'that…'

And the beautiful secret burst forth, the play's final plot-twist, the spotlight flooding onto the starring actor, '…beauty can be found in the least likely of places.'

There was a spellbound silence, like that of a theatre audience stunned by beauty. This last darkness, this falling of the curtain on the play's ending scene, was not final nor was it forever. Light filled the theatre again, but the silence here was not broken by any applause. Instead, it slid smoothly into sound that had always belonged next to it.

'I know there is still hope.'


End file.
